Manual:Miscellaneous Functions

Miscellaneous Functions

expandAlias

expandAlias(command,true/false)

Runs the command as if it was from the command line - so aliases are checked and if none match, it's sent to the the game. If the second argument is false, it will hide the command from being echoed back in your buffer. Defaults to true.

Example

<lua> expandAlias("t rat")

expandAlias("t rat", false) </lua>

Note: If you want to be using the matches table after calling expandAlias, you should save it first as local oldmatches = matches before calling expandAlias, since expandAlias will overwrite it.

display

display(value): This function will do it's best to show whatever you ask it (a number, string, table, function). This function can be useful for seeing what values does a table have, for example. Note that this doesn't handle recursive references and will loop infinitely at the moment (Mudlet 2.0-test4). If a value is a string, it'll be in single quotes, and if it's a number, it won't be quoted.

Example

<lua> -- ask it to display a table display({a = "somevalue", 1,2,3}) -- or some other target display(target) </lua>

sendAll

sendAll(list of things to send, [echo back or not]): send()'s a list of things to the game. If you'd like the commands not to be shown, include false at the end.

Example

<lua> -- instead of using many send() calls, you can use one sendAll sendAll("outr paint", "outr canvas", "paint canvas") -- can also have the commands not be echoed sendAll("hi", "bye", false) </lua>

sendTelnetChannel102

sendTelnetChannel102(msg): Sends a message via the 102 subchannel back to the MUD (that's used in Aardwolf). The msg is in a two byte format - see `help telopts` in Aardwolf on how that works.

Example

<lua> -- turn prompt flags on: sendTelnetChannel102("\52\1")

-- turn prompt flags off: sendTelnetChannel102("\52\2") </lua>

getMudletHomeDir

getMudletHomeDir(): Returns the current home directory of the current profile. This can be used to store data, save statistical information, or load resource files from packages.

Example

<lua> -- save a table table.save(getMudletHomeDir().."/myinfo.dat", myinfo)

-- or access package data. The forward slash works even on Windows fine local path = getMudletHomeDir().."/mypackagename" </lua>

getNetworkLatency

getNetworkLatency(): Returns the last measured response time between the sent command and the server reply e.g. 0.058 (=58 milliseconds lag) or 0.309 (=309 milliseconds). Also known as server lag.

Example

Need example

io.exists

io.exists(): Checks to see if a given file or folder exists. If it exists, it’ll return the Lua true boolean value, otherwise false.

Example

<lua> if io.exists("/home/vadi/Desktop") then

 echo("This folder exists!")

else

 echo("This folder doesn't exist.")

end

if io.exists("/home/vadi/Desktop/file.tx") then

 echo("This file exists!")

else

 echo("This file doesn't exist.")

end </lua>

spawn

t = spawn(read function, process to spawn)

Spawns a process and opens a communicatable link with it - read function is the function you'd like to use for reading output from the process, and t is a table containing functions specific to this connection - send(data), true/false = isRunning(), and close().

Example

<lua> -- simple example on a program that quits right away, but prints whatever it gets using the 'display' function local f = spawn(display, "ls") display(f.isRunning()) f.close() </lua>

downloadFile

downloadFile(saveto, url)

Downloads the resource at the given url into the saveto location on disk. This does not pause the script until the file is downloaded - instead, it lets it continue right away and downloads in the background. When a download is finished, the sysDownloadDone event is raised (with the saveto location as the argument), or when a download fails, the sysDownloadError event is raised with the reason for failure. You may call downloadFile multiple times and have multiple downloads going on at once - but they aren’t guaranteed to be downloaded in the same order that you started them in.

Note: Requires Mudlet 2.0+

Example

<lua> -- this example will check the Imperian homepage to see how many players are on right now

-- in an alias, download the Imperian homepage for stats processing downloadFile(getMudletHomeDir().."/page.html", "http://www.imperian.com/")

-- then create a new script with the name of downloaded_file, add the event handler -- for sysDownloadDone, and use this to parse the webpage and display the amount function downloaded_file(_, filename)

 -- is the file that downloaded ours?
 if not filename:match("page", 1, true) then return end

 -- parse our ownloaded file for the player count
 io.input(filename)
 local s = io.read("*all")
 local pc = s:match([[<a href='players.php%?search=who'>(%d+)</a>]])
 display("Imperian has "..tostring(pc).." players on right now.")
 io.open():close()
 os.remove(filename)

end </lua>

sendGMCP

sendGMCP(command): Sends a GMCP message to the server. The IRE document on GMCP has information about what can be sent, and what tables it will use, etcetera.

sendIrc

sendIrc(channel, message): Sends a message to an IRC channel or person. You must have the IRC window open, and if speaking to a channel, be joined in that channel. IRC currently only works on the freenode network and password-protected channels aren't supported.

Parameters

channel:

The channel to send the message to. Can be #<channelname> to send to a channel, or <person name> to send to a person. Passed as a string.

message:

The message to send. Passed as a string.

Example

<lua> --This would send "hello from Mudlet!" to the channel #mudlet on freenode.net sendIrc("#mudlet", "hello from Mudlet!") --This would send "identify password" in a private message to Nickserv on freenode.net sendIrc("Nickserv", "identify password") </lua>

playSoundFile

playSoundFile( fileName ): This function plays a sound file. On 2.0, it can play most sound formats and up to 4 sounds simulaneously.

Parameters

fileName:

Exact path of the sound file.

Example

<lua> -- play a sound in Windows playSoundFile(C:\My folder\boing.wav)

-- play a sound in Linux playSoundFile(/home/myname/Desktop/boingboing.wav)

-- play a sound from a package playSoundFile(getMuldetHomeDir().. /mypackage/boingboing.wav) </lua>

disconnect

disconnect(): Disconnects you from the game right away. Note that this will not properly log you out of the game.

Example

<lua> disconnect() </lua>

reconnect

reconnect(): Force-reconnects (so if you're connected, it'll disconnect) you to the game.

Example

<lua> -- you could trigger this on a log out message to reconnect, if you'd like reconnect() </lua>

showColors

showColors(columns): shows the named colors currently available in Mudlet's color table. These colors are stored in color_table, in table form. The format is color_table.colorName = {r,g,b}; See Also: bg, fg, cecho

Parameters

columns:

Number of columns to print the color table in. Passed as an integer number.

Example

<lua> showColors(4) </lua> The output for this is:

datetime:parse

</nowiki>datetime: parse(source, format, as_epoch)</nowiki>; Parses the specified source string, according to the format if given, to return a representation of the date/time. If as_epoch is provided and true, the return value will be a Unix epoch — the number of seconds since 1970. This is a useful format for exchanging date/times with other systems. If as_epoch is false, then a Lua time table will be returned. Details of the time tables are provided in the Lua Manual.

Supported Format Codes

<lua> %b = Abbreviated Month Name

%B = Full Month Name

%d = Day of Month

%H = Hour (24-hour format)

%I = Hour (12-hour format, requires %p as well)

%p = AM or PM

%m = 2-digit month (01-12)

%M = 2-digit minutes (00-59)

%S = 2-digit seconds (00-59)

%y = 2-digit year (00-99), will automatically prepend 20 so 10 becomes 2010 and not 1910.

%Y = 4-digit year. </lua>